Adventure Gamers - Forums

Good thread Advie.

Oscar - 13 May 2013 10:57 AM

Ingsoc - 13 May 2013 10:28 AM

To me you fail to mention the biggest thing that seem to disappear from the time of classic quests games and this is the verb system (take, use, look, open, eat etc.) which made the game more challenging, its seem to start to disappear from adventure games toward the end of the 90’es.

The verb system is still there. Most new games now use two verbs: “look” and “use” but you could say there’s also “give” when you use an inventory item on someone. Having “open” and “close” hardly made games more challenging: if there was a door or a chest, it’s obvious that you need to open it. The Space Quest system of “taste”, “smell” etc was interesting in terms of challenge but i’m not sure it was much more than entertainment value. It was not used in many actual puzzles.

I don’t like the decline from lots of verbs to just two (less control) but the worst is just having a pointer and clicking on things, which is becoming more common. You’re just telling the character where to go and in most cases don’t know what he’s going to do. More abstract games like Machinarium it works better. In Kyrandia it was infuriating at times.

I also agree that games can be a little bit too simplified with just a click. That way the player does not actually need to understand what he/she is doing. A good example is Gabriel Knight 1, where the player have different verbs to use (not more than 5 or 6 what I remember), and “forces” the player to understand what is going on. However I don’t think it is necessary to go back to the Monkey Island 1 style with 12 different verbs. :)

Oscar - 13 May 2013 09:59 PM

It’s interesting to me how as adventure games have evolved the way we are in the game-world has changed. From text adventures and the verb system when we were a physical matrix of verb-possibilities, to Samorost where we are no longer even a character, more of a force of nature. It makes the future look pretty exciting.

PLease do not get upset if i really wanted to make fun of this Oscar, but i wont ... im just gonna ask you do you consider this diminishing little by little from Text Pasher where every action was possible to More less controls (Given Verbs) ,then the left and right (Look and use)  to one click and then maybe to nothing just to have (our character) a walk around;... makes the future look pretty exciting.
please remember this and i know you are one of the people who actually do , at some point ago everything on the screen was interactive or at least described with text phaser in control , Hell i would had texted ‘look up the ceiling’ and Sonny still gave me an answer.

i wish, and that is my greatest wish for adventure , there would one Adventure that satisfies me for the rest of my life ; i want a game were devs do not to choose for me what is clickable and what is not .i want that everything there on the screen is to become interactive - a hot-spot .

but anyways i wish we not drift into this controls point through this thread ,there are many thing else would be mentioned ,some were bad and been fixed through the years and other that used to give more touch of reality or fun had disappeared ... there were games that took me 30-40 hours to be finish due all the possibilities were given, now we will be lucky if a game exceeds 10 hours of playing .

at last i wanna say it would seems to me the old Devs were good Gods and gave us worlds to make our choices (though they already knew their fate) ; new Devs/Gods are just manipulating (us) the players .

I’ll just give my opinion on the points you raise, and mention whether or not I agree that they are diminishing.

1.Vast Exploration and Vast Locations from Start.

Vast exploration is a plus, but vast locations from the start is actually not a good idea. It’s imo better to ‘ease’ players into a larger universe, much like Monkey Island 2 did: start with a smaller location before throwing open the gates to the world.
I agree that the current trend of having 5-7 screens per chapter before moving on to 5-7 other screens (rarely exceeding 8 available screens at a time) needs to be blown open, but it’s a development strategy that’s understandable given the low budgets available, imo.
Plus it can sometimes allow you to visit vastly different exotic locations in a single game (like Lost Horizon did), so it’s not all bad…

2.A big Number of NPCs to interact with .

I don’t recall this ever having been a large part of adventure gaming. Few games had a large number of NPCs with dialogue, imo. If anything, this is now starting to become more important (RPG influence, maybe?). L.A. Noire had this, and Dreamfall Chapters will have this, for instance.

3.NPCs Changes Location and Give different Clues/answers along the Game.

This is somewhat tied to the limited number of available locations in games: fewer locations also means fewer NPCs to ‘revisit’ during a game. There aren’t that many games where NPCs change locations during the game, though (or am I mistaken?).
Also: not that many games have day/night cycles with wandering NPCs that stick to a daily routine (like going from home to their shop at 8 am, returning home at 6 pm and being asleep from 11 pm until 7 am), but we might see that more in the future (again: possibly due to RPG influence). I’d definitely like to see more of that in adventure games.

4.Doing Tasks for others was a main concept to move on.

Doing tasks for others is a good way to add puzzles to a game, provided there’s actually a point in doing so (other than just being a kind adventurer). I prefer it if these are more complex than simple fetch-quests, though. It still is an important method in adventure games, imo: “I will give you the [object you need] if you first [do a task for me].”

5.Surroundings and Objects that didn’t exist can Change or appear at a certain time.

This depends. If you’ve ‘exhausted’ a location and done everything that needed to be done there, then I wouldn’t like a sudden appearance of an item at that location (especially if you otherwise have no reason to ever go back there again). This could lead to unwanted backtracking, imo.
If the location is one you’re going to pass through several times anyway (like one of the central streets in a vast city, or just outside your house/office), then sure: certain events could “change” what you find at that location.
I don’t really think this is disappearing from adventure games per se, though.

6.Narrators adds and reveals inner feelings of our heroes like with Story telling.

Depends on the kind of story that is being told. Some games work better with an independent/God-like narrator, other games work better with inner dialogue of the main character, other games work better with no narration at all. It depends on the type of story that is being told (and on the importance of the main character’s ‘inner dialogue’, for instance).

7.Examining things or interact with NPCs again can always reveal something new.

This usually takes a lot of extra writing efforts, so I can definitely understand that few games have this. But then again, not that many games had this to begin with, imo. Most of the time, NPCs start recycling their statements pretty quickly (or only repeat their one single line).

8.Not all objects/surroundings contain clues ,sometimes they are just there.

Red herrings! I love these, they add to the interactivity of a location. Some games even have an insane amount of hotspots (Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon for instance). The more the better, imo.
‘Empty’ or ‘useless’ locations are a different matter, though, especially in games with a limited number of screens. Every location should have a clear purpose, imo. Unless it’s a fully first-person explorable 3D world of course (Miasmata, Dreamfall Chapters, L.A. Noire, etc.) - those can certainly have a few more “empty” patches.

9.An inventory object held from that start stay usable until the far end (used to be cliche).

Removing inventory items you will no longer need (or for which it doesn’t really make sense to have them anymore) can and should disappear from the inventory, imo. Depends on the inventory interface, though. If the interface is limited, then the number of items should be limited too. If the inventory allows for a large number of items on the other hand, then sure, keep everything and then some (red herring objects allow for max inventory madness!).
Particularly useful items (Indy’s whip, or a crowbar, or rope, or money) can and should remain in your inventory at all times.

10.The puzzles used to get harder and harder as you progress in the game.

That’s subjective, imo, and very hard to implement: what I think of as a hard puzzle could be easy for you and vice versa. Plus I don’t really know of any games that had a huge ramp up in difficulty. Often it’s even the other way around where the puzzles late in the game feel more rushed than the complex ones early in the game. Depends on the games and the puzzles, though.
A ramp up in difficulty is easier to achieve with mini-puzzles or with gameplay mechanics à la Portal or Ghost Trick, than with puzzles, imo.

Number nine i phrased wrongly or mistyped it gave another meaning than what i wanted to,

Advie - 13 May 2013 05:15 AM

9.An inventory object held from that start would stay unusable until at point that is far at end (used to be cliche).

i edited it

Great thread advie, and a plenty of things to discuss and think about. I agree with Tim who already nicely said that many of these things really depend on the design of the specific game - what might suit for one game, might not suit for the other.

Let me also add two things that I think should be “improved”:

1. Puzzles have improved “efficiency” in the last 10 years or so, meaning there’s less frustration, no dead-ends, there’re options to highlight hotspots… but the “core” of the puzzles, “fair difficulty” and satisfaction of solving it could be even more improved. I’m not saying games have become easier, because I could mention plenty of recent titles (Daedalic’s for example, or Frogwares’ Awakened/Nemesis) that gave me days and nights of hard but fair challenges and brain exercise in the right way. I’m getting stuck in new games, so I would be hypocrite if I’d say: “New games are easier than the older ones”, but what I’d really like to express is that we need more designers/companies who’re willing to put more work on creative and challenging but well-thought-out puzzles.

2. Dracula 1 (1999):

Dracula 2 (2000):

Dracula 4 (2013):

George Stobbart:

Day of the Tentacle (1993):

The Curse of Monkey Island (1997):

Broken Age (2013):

Simply put, graphic-wise, and with character models/animation… things have little improved. I realize that’s also probably with the fact that average adventure game budget is smaller, which is obvious when comparing for example Toonstruck animation to that of Chains of Satinav. However, there’s more to it than being just “nice graphics” because the style, animation… can really bring the best out of the game, and I’d like if designers would opt less to cut some budget corners that way.

... continuing (after some minor posting difficulties) ...

11 Almost always the last puzzle that ends the game is terribly difficult.

Again: subjective. And I also don’t know of any examples of this. Was this really that common? Does ‘Le Serpent Rouge’ qualify?
All of the games I can think of that had a particularly difficult puzzle, featured that puzzle either early or in the middle of the game, imo.
I don’t know, I’ve always considered ramping difficulties as something that was more inherent to other genres and more arcade-y games (likes shooters, fighters or strategy games), not something that was a part of adventure gaming. The same goes for “difficult last puzzles” - end boss fights are not something you see in adventure games, imo.

12 Score or progress was monitored and if not music theme rewards you whenever you Do the right action .

I don’t mind seeing this go. Some of these things can be linked to achievements, and it’s possibly fun for completionist players, but the mechanics of the adventure scoring system have always been rather faulty (where you could never get the maximum amount because of puzzles with multiple solutions or because the score never “stacks” on multiple playthroughs).
I don’t know, I feel this is something that’s more a “bonus” feature, and imo it should be treated as such. It’s an in-game achievement, but it rarely matters for the game itself.

13.There is always a hotspot (pixel hunting) that intentionally hiding badly.

I’m glad to see this go. Pixel hunting is not my favourite activity in a game, and I’m glad we now have hotspot revealers. I hate missing a near-invisible one-pixel item and ending up stuck (or consulting a walkthrough) because of it…
I embrace the hotspot revealer but I try not to abuse it: I go over the room first, and then check the revealer to see if I haven’t missed anything.

14.Always there are 1 or 2 puzzles that intended to be the crème de la crème that really bust your mind!!

Again, it’s subjective. Puzzle difficulty is really hard to gauge.
Also, some of the best puzzles I’ve seen in adventure games (see our favourite adventure game puzzles thread) aren’t necessarily mind-blowing (nor extremely difficult) - they’re just very well-designed. It’s really hard to explain or quantify a thing like that…

15.At least 2-3 Puzzles there ,can be done at one phase without a must-do-order.

Non-linearity! This actually ties in with the exploration: if you have 30 locations at your disposal at the same time, you can expect to solve a lot of the puzzles in a different order than someone else would (or than the designers intended). Linear games can be fun, too, but non-linear is definitely something I like in a game (provided they don’t completely drown you with locations and puzzles - the Tri-Island area in Monkey Island 2 is about the largest non-linear part you should have, anything larger is risky. Rubacava (Year Two in Grim Fandango) is ideal, imo.

16.Many dialogues that has nothing to do with solving the game are just there to make you happy.(i Give this to Tim)

Thank you! ... Oh, you meant Schafer…
I chalk this one up to good story-telling / good writing. Some characters can just be there for added depth without having a real function in-game. Some “unnecessary” characters can have a very memorable scene that’s funny, profound, or just cool. If it’s well-written, they can put this in the game any day of the week, imo.
Father Torque, anyone?

17.The hero never says a clue like ‘i need to’.. or ‘i should’ , he just describes what is there .

I actually prefer it if something like this is implemented as a difficulty option, like they did in Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward. If you play the escape-the-room sequences on ‘hard’, you get no hints from either your character or any of the others. If you play them on ‘easy’, then the others give you hints, and if you seem to be stuck still, they start giving you bigger hints.
This is something that should be optional, imo.
Plus I’d prefer it if the hints didn’t come from the character I’m playing. It’s kinda lame that my character would know what to do, when I don’t. If your sidekick then gives the hint, it doesn’t break immersion that much. But that may just be personal preference…

18.Music almost accompanied the player all the time as a surround ambient music to keep him/her enjoying the every scene .

Depends on the game design (not to mention the budget), but I prefer having *some* music when playing. It needs to fit the mood of the game, though, and they should really avoid the pitfall of having generic/repetitive music (again: budget constraints could be crucial here).
Most games handle this well, though. I don’t recall a lot of games with grating music or too much silence.

19.Inventory combining were always a tricky job and its not (if never) the 1st thing that comes up to our little/shallow mind.

Well, if it’s the first thing that pops in our mind, then in all likeliness, the puzzle’s too easy. But it can’t be too hard/obtuse either. Combining certain items needs to have some logic to it (a bit less so in comedy games, but still, having to try everything on everything should be avoided). This isn’t always easy to pull off well (rubber duck puzzle in TLJ, anyone?), but most games manage this just fine, imo.

... part three ...

20.NON-Interactive Surroundings hold clues sometimes ,some things can be seen there all the time and its for you to notice what are they represent and help without being clickable (hot-spots).

You’re talking about the scarf blowing in the wind for the spitting contest in MI2, aren’t you?
Personally I feel that if you’re going to include something like this, then it needs to be pretty obvious. If not, you can seriously harm the game by making the relevant puzzle too difficult. Needing to kick the right stone at the right time in Full Throttle, or blowing the gravedigger’s horn when a tree branch is pointing down instead of up in King’s Quest VII are good examples of this done poorly. They’re hardly obvious (although the one in Full Throttle isn’t that bad), and they can seriously mislead you if you do the right action at the wrong time (making you conclude that it wasn’t the right action to begin with).
Frankly, those are things that should really be avoided (or otherwise be very much *in your face*)...

21.Always Trying crazy stuff can reward some great surprises you would never have thought they are possible.

If the writing and/or programming of the game allows for this, then it can greatly improve the interactivity. Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon did this well, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout too. It’s a plus if the game encourages this, but implementing it in the first place is often going to be budget-dependant, so I definitely get the reluctance to go very far in this…

22. One (and only one) ending when you reach the end of the game.

Depends on the game. I don’t really mind a bunch of different endings, as long as it’s either clear that there’s a “best” ending to be achieved, or that all the other endings feel as complete as a true ending should.
Heck, some games even use the different endings that you *have* to see as a plot device (the Zero Escape series). Seeing multiple endings is kinda mandatory in a story like that.
I also like what David Cage tried to achieve with this in Heavy Rain - no matter what your choices are, you get a complete ending based on what you did, whether it’s a bad, mediocre or good ending.
I’d like to see more good/light/paragon-bad/dark/renegade variations in a main character that lead to a good/light/paragon or bad/dark/renegade ending, like a lot of RPGs have. The only adventure game that has something similar is The Pandora Directive with its ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ line…

23. Text parser

While I agree that you have more freedom with a text parser, I can no longer use one. Years of pointing and clicking have made me dislike the text parser to the point where I’m not going anywhere near text parser games. I’d spend too much time fighting the parser anyway. Pointing and clicking is the way for me (although I don’t mind RPG-like first-person controls either). So yeah, I don’t mind seeing this go.

24. Many verbs/Actions use or at least the 3-4 coin’s commands .

I don’t see a lot of problems with just having a pointer to ‘look’ and ‘use’. I do prefer “verb coin pop-ups” (like in Full Throttle) over the “changeable cursor” (like in Sam & Max Hit the Road or Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers).
The Special Edition of Monkey Island 2 handled the interface extremely well, imo, with a pop-up verb coin that changed depending on the available actions (and with assigning the inventory to the middle mouse button which I consider a stroke of genius). I’d like to see more of that interface…

Advie -

im just gonna ask you do you consider this diminishing little by little from Text Pasher where every action was possible to More less controls (Given Verbs) ,then the left and right (Look and use)  to one click and then maybe to nothing just to have (our character) a walk around;... makes the future look pretty exciting.

Really? In a text parser every action was possible? I spent more time fighting with the parser to get it to do what I wanted. I got more “I don’t know how to [verb]” messages than I actually achieved something. All things combined, a text parser recognizes about 50 verbs, and if you discount similar actions (look, inspect, investigate and examine, for instance), you probably arrive at 15. And out of those 15, half of them are contextual “use” verbs. There’s not that much difference between “flick light switch” and “turn light on” or between “unlock door” and “use key on door”, so really, a text parser really only uses a handful of options too.
Most of the time, the two-button interface (where a left-click is ‘look’ and right-click is ‘use’ or vice versa) is context-sensitive too. ‘Look’ stays the same, but “use person” autotranslates to “talk to person”, “use item” is just that, “use item on item” autotranslates to “combine items” and “use item on person” autotranslates to “give item to person”. So our two-button interface in reality has 5 verbs too…
Going from a parser to a verb coin to a two-button interface isn’t really “dumbing it down”, but more “making it more efficient and less frustrating”. Also not needing to type (and retype and rephrase) anything, or not needing to click four times for one single command, is a great time-saver. It allows for more puzzles in your game…
The future looks exciting to me too, because breaking free of the shackles of a text parser or verb coin can allow for more innovation in the interface. Just look at what you can do in Miasmata for instance. Look at how Machinarium worked. Tell me you don’t think that’s not a giant leap forward from the text parser…

but anyways i wish we not drift into this controls point through this thread ,there are many thing else would be mentioned ,some were bad and been fixed through the years and other that used to give more touch of reality or fun had disappeared ... there were games that took me 30-40 hours to be finish due all the possibilities were given, now we will be lucky if a game exceeds 10 hours of playing .

Game length is story-dependent. Some games are finished in just a few hours but are perfect the way they are (Loom, To the Moon), others last for dozens and dozens of hours and practically have you begging them to stop. It’s really subjective…
Also, long games are still being made. I found Lost Horizon to be quite lengthy, despite taking me “only” 15 hours. The last game I played, Virtue’s Last Reward, took me 47 hours to complete. 47 hours! Most RPGs don’t even take that long!
Compare that to the measly 10 hours that most AAA shooters give you, and those cost you about 5-10 times as much as an adventure game. We’re getting more than enough bang for our buck, imo. That hasn’t changed…

Hogging the thread some more:

9.An inventory object held from that start would stay unusable until at point that is far at end (used to be cliche).

I don’t mind having items in my inventory that just sit there unused for 90% of the game, but I can’t really think of any good examples that use this ploy. Most inventory items get picked up at random times and are used at random times, so of course there’s bound to be a few outliers that are picked up very early and used only very late in the game.
It’s not something that should disappear, but it’s also not something that I’ve ever really noticed, so I can’t say if it’s diminishing or not…

In Duckman you carry a piece of gum throughout the entire game, and it doesn’t come to use before the very final scene in a rather obscure puzzle, but due to the fact that it’s the only item you haven’t used yet, it becomes quite logical to try it

It is a quiote large list of elements, but i have tried to give some intelligent comments to them all.

1.Vast Exploration and Vast Locations from Start.
This hasn’t completely disappeared there are still a few games that have vast locations and sometimes even right from the start, Chaos on Deponia is a perfect example of this.

But it has certainly become less common, and it is one of the things i personally miss most in many modern games, for me exploring a large area and figuring out what i have to do in each screen is an important thing. But this is also connected to non-linearity, there is no point in having a large area to explore, if you can only actually doe something in a single screen.

As Tim also wrote, it might be better to ease players into the game first with a smaller location, and then open up to larger locations, and sometime a location can become too big.

2.A big Number of NPCs to interact with.
I think this has more to do with the size of the game. On average i think there is more or less an equal amount of NPCs per screen in old and modern games. But most modern games are smaller and takes less time to play.

3.NPCs Changes Location and Give different Clues/answers along the Game.
I don’t think this has ever been common, and i can also thing of some relative new games where this happens (5 years old or newer). Whether it is a good or bad idea depends entirely on the game.

4.Doing Tasks for others was a main concept to move on.
I am not sure this has changed much, it is still a main concept in AG and i can think of several examples of newer games that uses this.
The actual task may have changed a bit and become less arbitrary and more connected to the story, but that is only a good thing.

5.Surroundings or Objects that don’t exist can Change or appear at any certain time.
Can’t think of many games where this happens, neither old or new games. I’m also not sure it is a good thing, at the very least the game would have to make it obvious that you have to revisit some places.

6.Narrators adds and reveals inner feelings of our heroes like with Story telling.
Personally i am not a big fan of narrators. Show it don’t tell it that is my motto, if the protagonist has some inner feelings then let it come out in a dialog with another character, or hint at it with facial expressions etc.

The best example i can thing of where a narrator added something to the game, is Sam&Max;: The Devil’s Playhouse but here it was actual cut-scenes with the narrator and not just voice-over.

7.Examining things or interact with NPCs again can always reveal something new.
There is plenty of examples from newer games, where you have to talk to NPC multiple times, i don’t think this has actually changed much.

8.Not all objects/surroundings contain clues ,sometimes they are just there.
There is perhaps less Red Herrings ie. objects that aren’t used for anything, and i do love the occasionally Red Herring, but i don’t thing places with no purpose have ever been common, and there is still plenty of games with hotspots that just give you some comment Edna & Harvey the most extreme example.

9.An inventory object held from that start would stay unusable until a certain point far at the game end (used to be a cliche).
Not a big fan of this, i prefer that you have to find an object when you need it, rather than running around with a lot of objects waiting for some place to use it. Completely avoiding this is probably impossible, but i think most modern games actually do this better, though there can also be examples of where this works very well.

10.The puzzles used to get harder and harder as you progress in the game.
I still think they do, most games starts out easy and then increase the difficulty.

11 Almost always the last puzzle that ends the game is terribly difficult.
There is also some modern games that likes to go out on a high note, and have a special puzzle at the end, Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island, Gray Matter to name two. The problem is that they can often fell like something attached to the game rather then a natural part, simply because it is inconsistent with the rest of the game.

12 Score or progress was monitored and if not music theme rewards you whenever you Do the right action.
I am not sure i have ever liked that, at least not unless there is a meaning to it like a different ending depending on your score. A relative new game like Culpa Innata actually also had a scoring system.

13.There is always a hotspot (pixel hunt) that intentionally hiding badly.
Good riddance - Thank the lord for hotspot revealers.

14.Always there are 1 or 2 puzzles that intended to be the crème de la crème that really bust your mind!!
I don’t think this has changed much, most modern games also tries to have 1 or 2 extra difficult puzzles, The Critter Chronicles to name one example. There are of course also exceptions but this is usually in very easy games.

INTRO:
when i wrote those points i didn’t prepare them or knew what i am about to write, but i was prepared to give a sort of survey of how modern games forgotten/neglecting lots of fun features which were (IMO) the reason of the great success and discovery of the Genre , and for some reason i didn’t want to tell why they had been diminishing not disappearing as may they exist but sometimes it to the extend of Zero.
 
2nd i wasn’t mentioning those points to be judged good or bad even by me. i was pointing to undeniable facts, yes facts and as some point might look like a duplicate for a previous i believe not .

and let me add this i am 37 played my 1st adventure when i was 8 and it makes me happy to know their are People who had grown up/on many industries; Football, Ciemna, or Rock n roll , i missed all and didn’t miss adventuring gaming (luckily)

Vast Exploration and Vast Locations from Start.

Vast exploration is a plus, but vast locations from the start is actually not a good idea. It’s imo better to ‘ease’ players into a larger universe, much like Monkey Island 2 did:start with a smaller location before throwing open the gates to the world.I agree that the current trend of having 5-7 screens per chapter before moving on to 5-7 other screens (rarely exceeding 8 available screens at a time) needs to be blown open, but it’s a development strategy that’s understandable given the low budgets available, imo.
Plus it can sometimes allow you to visit vastly different exotic locations in a single game (like Lost Horizon did), so it’s not all bad…

If vast exploration is a plus and that a judgement , then everything else is as well from dialogue trees to combining objects, if you think also its not a good idea (which is another judgment) the fact that all the great classics had it the option denies that. and vast locations can verify there are those endless as KQIV to fairly enough as Syberia .
if you think MI2 didn’t have vast Exploration from start then you don’t get the point as less than 20% of your progress in MI2 you able to wonder through 3 different islands , and the appearance of new island doesn’t remove the previous out of the game so it about huge numbers of screens and location which are all accumulating & giving the feeling of the real world, aren’t that why we love AG,

A big Number of NPCs to interact with .

I don’t recall this ever having been a large part of adventure gaming. Few games had a large number of NPCs with dialogue, imo. If anything, this is now starting to become more important (RPG influence, maybe?). L.A. Noire had this, and Dreamfall Chapters will have this, for instance.

that is a hasty answer did you ever wonder of the interactive NPCs appeared at MI1 or The Longest Journey or PQ1 or Laura Bow or Simon2.. or and then if you remember, remind me how many were there at the great Gemini Rue , ot the Critter Chronicles… Edna and Harvey had it good, but the interaction was limited

NPCs Changes Location and Give different Clues/answers along the Game.

This is somewhat tied to the limited number of available locations in games: fewer locations also means fewer NPCs to ‘revisit’ during a game. There aren’t that many games where NPCs change locations during the game, though (or am I mistaken?).
Also: not that many games have day/night cycles with wandering NPCs that stick to a daily routine (like going from home to their shop at 8 am, returning home at 6 pm and being asleep from 11 pm until 7 am), but we might see that more in the future (again: possibly due to RPG influence). I’d definitely like to see more of that in adventure games.

Phantasmagoria had the 2 features along no NPC stayed still and no one repeated himself and Sins of the Fathers gave the 2nd but still i say new games have it in a limited way so its not diminished ;at Art of Murder NPCs have something new to tell as you progress ... so its not about if these elements disappeared or even if games better with or without them.